


A Vast Nothing

by onionrings_andhoneymustard



Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: Gen, Heavy focus on his depression and how he deals with it, Jonah is depressed, Or doesn't deal with it, also suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onionrings_andhoneymustard/pseuds/onionrings_andhoneymustard
Summary: It's mid-April when Jonah realizes he isn't happy.  He buys French fries at White Barn and eats them sitting on the grass lot across the street.  Dipping them into a puddle of ketchup in the corner of the boat, he watches the sun set, and thinks about dying.





	A Vast Nothing

It's mid-April when Jonah realizes he isn't happy.  He buys French fries at White Barn and eats them sitting on the grass lot across the street.  Dipping them into a puddle of ketchup in the corner of the boat, he watches the sun set, and thinks about dying.

 That night, he takes his car and drives.  Tries to extricate himself from the city and the start-stop pull that tugs against his ribcage, the suffocating feel of being pressed right up against people like kernels of corn and yet indescribably distant.

Rolling down the window, he lets the air in.  It’s cold enough to make the hairs on his arms stand on end, and still in a way that makes it almost an obligation to turn the radio up to destroy it.  The music is just loud enough that his thoughts become a refrigerator hum in the back of his mind, steady and inconsequential.

The song ends, an ad for a local mattress store taking its place.  He fiddles with the dial, trying to find a station that feels like coming home.  He gives up after a few minutes, turning the radio off and letting the cut of tires over asphalt bring him back to the hard blink of traffic lights and the odd silence of empty stores and empty parking lots that were filled just hours before. He wonders how air can be so loud when you're driving, hand out the window, slicing through.

He drives until he can park somewhere and not seem out of place.  There's a bookstore that’s always open late, with a cafe tucked into a corner of it.  The cafe area is small, with round tables, wooden chairs, and  one wall of big windows.  He counts at least three other people in the store before he orders. 

Sitting next to a window, he eats coffee cake with a plastic spoon and washes it down with caramel-laced coffee. (He'd almost ordered a mocha, because it reminds him of his brother, and sometimes he does stupid things like that when he misses a person.)

Tapping a pen he’s borrowed from the front counter against a clean napkin, he sifts through his thoughts, trying to find words to bleed down.  If he could write out how he feels, he thinks he’d be okay.  But his mind feels empty - as it so often does lately - void of anything but simple phrases and fragments of poems whose concepts he can't quite reach, grasp and trap in a cage.

It's late when he gets home, the front door's lock sounding impossibly loud as he slides it into place.  He wonders if Garrett hears, and most of him hopes Garrett doesn’t.

He barely sleeps, even though he’s exhausted.  When he checks his phone, it’s late enough to be considered “early morning,” which is reason enough for him to get up and slip into the bathroom, silently grateful he doesn’t have to be at work.

He cries once he's safely in the shower, lets the tears well up hot against his lids. He's not really sure what he's crying for, why his heart feels like it's been expanded to fill his whole chest and is trying to break out. Shame, embarrassment, fear, loneliness - he doesn't know. Just lets the feelings overwhelm him and spill out on his cheeks.

Redressing in his pajamas, he makes a cup of coffee and goes to sit on the back steps that lead out to a tiny patio.  Jonah doesn’t normally like being on the ground floor of an apartment building, but he supposes in some ways it has its advantages; their patio is larger than their upstairs neighbor’s balcony.

The sky is clear, and it’s cold - the sun has yet to crest the horizon, leaving the sky looking almost purple, like a plum.  He sits there as his coffee goes cold, hums a Beatles song as the sun rises, and tries to ignore the melancholy lining his throat.

It's a steady feeling as time passes, unyielding with the way it infiltrates his bones and settles into his chest.  It's not that he's constantly sad, or anything. There are the moments when he feels so alive, when joy cuts through the fog to startle him with the realization that - at that moment - he's happy.  He soaks it in when he experiences it, wishes he had someone to share it with.  He almost writes a text to his brother, but deletes it from his drafts before he can send it.

There are nights when he keeps himself up until the cold hits its peak, the air is still, and the energy drink he chugs down at the beginning of his shift tastes metallic and overly-sweet at once.  Entering a new day without a break for sleep makes him feel like something’s missing, like his skin doesn't fit quite right.  It reinforces the isolation that envelopes him, even though he sees people every day.  When he does sleep, it’s a spectacular crash as soon as he reaches his bed, one that leaves him feeling disoriented and groggy when he wakes.

Half the time these days, Jonah feels like he’s operating on autopilot. Finishes a sentence and can't remember what just came out of his mouth, hopes the words fit the situation.  No one’s said anything to make him think they don’t so, for now, he figures he’s safe.

It’s a Tuesday night in May when he notices a bruise on his thigh he doesn't know the origin of. It's an apple green, stark against his pale skin. He presses his thumb to it - hard - and waits for the flash and hiss of pain; it doesn't come.  At some point, he gets up to brush his teeth with toothpaste he took from his room the last time he stayed at a hotel.  As he brushes, it foams, stinging the corners of his mouth. He moves slowly, methodically, the toothpaste drying his mouth out with how clean it makes it.

When he returns to his room, he turns off the lights and sits on the floor with his back against the bed. For a long time he sits there in the dark, eventually rising so he can push the window up and open.  The cool air feels like a kiss, sending goose bump shivers dancing up his arms and prickling across his chest.  It makes him feel alive, reminds him that his body is still human even when his mind operates it like a short-circuiting robot.

He keeps himself awake past the point that his vision's starting to blur and he passes out instead of falling asleep. Just so he can forget about how he feels, just so he doesn't have to think.

There's a day in late June that’s especially bad, when Jonah feels like he's spinning out of control.  His skin feels too small and yet too big; muscles spun tight, and bones aching sharp. It chokes him, turns his sentences into words. Presses against his temples, hot and tight.  He wants to rip his hair from his skull and scream until his vocal cords burn hot and raw, until he can't breathe and his voice goes out like it does when he's had a cold for two weeks.  Gradually it burns off and turns into an ache, like the first time he accidentally burnt his thumb trying to light a bowl - sharp and somehow dull at the same time; his life seems to be nothing but a study in contrasts, lately.

He asks Garrett to go to dinner with him one night, and the two make their way to a diner that serves breakfast all day. They get waffles and milkshakes, and a basket of onion rings.

Through the window of the restaurant, Jonah can see the freeway. Red and white sliding by each other in opposite directions. All those people; all that life. It amazes him, at times, how many other people there are in the world. How many other people just in the same city, the same state. All living their lives and not so much as ever brushing elbows. It makes him feel disoriented and disconnected. 

Suddenly, he feels on the verge of tears, feels sick. Like his stomach is tensed up for a blow that won't be delivered.

"Have you ever punched a wall?" he asks finally, looking across the formica at Garrett.

Garrett looks up, tilts his head slightly.  "No."

"Do you want to?"

"No. Do you?"

"Not really."

"Are you okay?"

Jonah sighs softly.  "I'm sick of being depressed."

"You're depressed?"  There’s a roundness to Garrett’s tone, like he’s holding a blanket and willing to wrap it around Jonah’s shoulders if he’s cold.

Jonah shrugs. It's easy, with the endless cycle of early mornings and late nights to doubt himself, to wonder if he actually is depressed, or just tired.

After a while, Garrett starts talking again. And while Jonah listens, he doesn't quite hear, too wrapped up in his own thoughts. He wonders - as he so often does - if he's wrong. If he's making out his feelings to be more than they are, more than they should be. He knows there are other people with bigger problems, ones more horrible than what he's going through. But it doesn't make it any easier, doesn't make the hurt any less.

"Am I being selfish?" he asks.

Garrett blinks, cut off mid-sentence. "I don't think you can help it."

And Jonah nods, satisfied in some way.

In July, Jonah buys a straight razor after reading up on how to shave with it.  Garrett asks him about it, and Jonah strings a few sentences together about wanting to get into touch with the past, how everything’s too streamlined and easy these days; he wants a challenge.  He doesn’t tell Garrett how he relishes the spark of adrenaline it gives him when he’s shaving and drags the razor over his Adam's apple. How he thinks about what it would be like if his hand slipped and he sliced his throat open. He can already see the look Garrett would give him, as though Jonah's a kitten with a barbed tail.

Occasionally, Garrett asks how he’s doing in a way Jonah knows is different than the usual.  He says, "I want to go on vacation." when things are especially bad, when his brain's too full and he just wants to be able to escape, to relax. He never has a destination in mind, but sometimes Garrett will look up travel deals all the same, and Jonah appreciates the gesture.  It’s not until Garrett mentions a round trip to California that Jonah gets serious, pulls out his credit card and adds a trip he doesn’t need to his pile of debt.

California is nice, especially in early-September when the heat of summer is beginning to dissipate, and on the second day Jonah finds himself driving up the coast in a rental car until he finds a small beach town he likes the look of. 

He makes his way to the pier, taking deep breaths as he meanders down it.  There’s something about the ocean air that makes him feel clean and dirty at the same time.  He glances down as he walks, catching glimpses of water through cracks between the wooden slats.  The water is green, white foam floating on top, and he wonders what it would be like if the pier just crumbled to the sea. If he'd drown, or be able to break the surface and swim to shore.

Reaching the end of the pier, he looks down, watches the water dance around the pillars that hold it up for a long time. Pulling out his phone, he writes Garrett a text, _It's not that I want to die,_ he says, _so much as I want to be reborn._

After setting his phone on a bench, he walks back over to the end of the pier and hoists himself up onto the top beam. Before he can think about it, he steps off, tumbles in the air. Seconds later, the ocean sucks him in for a hug. He closes his eyes, and tastes salt on his lips.

 


End file.
